Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Medieval manuscripts written by Arabic scholars can provide valuable
meteorological information to help modern scientists reconstruct the climate of
the past, a new study has revealed. The research, published in Weather,
analyses the writings of scholars, historians and diarists in Iraq during the
Islamic Golden Age between 816-1009 AD for evidence of extreme weather in Iraq,
including snowfalls and hailstorms in Baghdad.

Reconstructing climates from the past provides historical comparison to
modern weather events and valuable context for climate change. In the natural
world trees, ice cores and coral provide evidence of past weather, but from
human sources scientists are limited by the historical information available.

Until now researchers have relied on official records detailing weather patterns
including air force reports during World War Two and 18th century ship’s logs.
Now a team of Spanish scientists from the Universidad de Extremadura have turned
to Arabic documentary sources from the 9th and 10th centuries (3rd and 4th in
the Islamic calendar). The sources, from historians and political commentators
of the era, focus on the social and religious events of the time, but do refer
to abnormal weather events.

New archaeological evidence suggests that America was first discovered by
Stone Age people from Europe – 10,000 years before the Siberian-originating
ancestors of the American Indians set foot in the New World.

A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back
between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the
US east coast. Three of the sites are on the Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland,
discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. One
is in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by
scallop-dredging fishermen on the seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on
what, in prehistoric times, would have been dry land.

The new discoveries are among the most important archaeological breakthroughs
for several decades - and are set to add substantially to our understanding of
humanity's spread around the globe.

The archaeological examination by robotic camera of an intact first century
tomb in Jerusalem has revealed a set of limestone Jewish ossuaries or "bone
boxes" that are engraved with a rare Greek inscription and a unique iconographic
image that the scholars involved identify as distinctly Christian.

The four-line Greek inscription on one ossuary refers to God "raising up"
someone and a carved image found on an adjacent ossuary shows what appears to be
a large fish with a human stick figure in its mouth, interpreted by the
excavation team to be an image evoking the biblical story of Jonah.

In the earliest gospel materials the "sign of Jonah," as mentioned by Jesus,
has been interpreted as a symbol of his resurrection. Jonah images in later
"early" Christian art, such as images found in the Roman catacombs, are the most
common motif found on tombs as a symbol of Christian resurrection hope. In
contrast, the story of Jonah is not depicted in any first century Jewish art and
iconographic images on ossuaries are extremely rare, given the prohibition
within Judaism of making images of people or animals.

Washington: An
international team of researchers, studying ancient DNA, have suggested
that most Neanderthals in Europe already were largely extinct 50,000
years ago - long before modern humans first arrived in the continent.

The findings contradict the long-held notion that Neanderthal
populations were stable in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years
until modern Homo sapiens arrived.

The scientists say the Neanderthal human species already had died off as
early as 50,000 years ago, but a small group recovered and survived for
another 10,000 years in areas of central and western Europe before
modern humans entered the picture.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Four previously unknown shipwrecks have been discovered some 30 kilometers off the Bay of Irakleio, Crete, in recent underwater exploration conducted by the ephorate of underwater antiquities.

The new finds comprise two Roman era shipwrecks, one containing 1st and 2nd-century Cretan amphorae and the other containing 5th-7th century post-Roman era amphorae, and two shipwrecks containing Byzantine amphorae, dated from the 8th-9th century and later.

The finds, which were made south and east of the Dia islet, which lies 7 nautical miles north of Irakleio, were documented and taken ashore for further analysis.

An Arabic manuscript written under the second half of the Abbasid Era : Wiki Commons
Iraqi sources from 9th and 10th centuries give new meteorological insights

Ancient manuscripts written by Arabic scholars can provide valuable meteorological information to help modern scientists reconstruct the climate of the past, a new study has revealed. The research, published in Weather, analyses the writings of scholars, historians and diarists in Iraq during the Islamic Golden Age between 816-1009 AD for evidence of abnormal weather patterns.

Reconstructing climates from the past provides historical comparison to modern weather events and valuable context for climate change. In the natural world trees, ice cores and coral provide evidence of past weather, but from human sources scientists are limited by the historical information available. Until now researchers have relied on official records detailing weather patterns including air force reports during WW2 and 18th century ship’s logs.

Now a team of Spanish scientists from the Universidad de Extremadura have turned to Arabic documentary sources from the 9th and 10th centuries (3rd and 4th in the Islamic calendar). The sources, from historians and political commentators of the era, focus on the social and religious events of the time, but do refer to abnormal weather events.

New findings from an international team of researchers show that most
neandertals in Europe died off around 50,000 years ago. The previously held view
of a Europe populated by a stable neandertal population for hundreds of
thousands of years up until modern humans arrived must therefore be revised.

This new perspective on the neandertals comes from a study of ancient DNA
published today in Molecular Biology and Evolution. The results indicate
that most neandertals in Europe died off as early as 50,000 years ago. After
that, a small group of neandertals recolonised central and western Europe, where
they survived for another 10,000 years before modern humans entered the picture.
The study is the result of an international project led by Swedish and Spanish
researchers in Uppsala, Stockholm and Madrid.

"The fact that neandertals in Europe were nearly extinct, but then recovered,
and that all this took place long before they came into contact with modern
humans came as a complete surprise to us. This indicates that the neandertals
may have been more sensitive to the dramatic climate changes that took place in
the last Ice Age than was previously thought", says Love Dalén, associate
professor at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm.

Newly published results from an international team of researchers show that most
of an earlier population of Neanderthals in Europe had already died off around
50,000 years ago.

Previously, the established view was of a stable Neanderthal population in
Europe from nearly 250,000 to 30,000 years ago and then they disappeared from
the archaeological record after modern humans arrived, however this new research
suggests the accepted paradigm must be revised.

A new perspective

This new perspective on the Neanderthals comes from a study of ancient DNA
published today in Molecular Biology and Evolution. The results indicate that
most European Neanderthals had died off as early as 50,000 years ago. After
which, a smaller group of Neanderthals recolonised central and western Europe,
where they survived until modern humans entered the picture.

Cadw, the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW) and the four Welsh Archaeological
Trusts have been working in partnership on several projects which are aimed at
improving our understanding of the historic landscape of Wales, at both the
national and local levels. In 1998 and 2001, as a first step towards raising the
profile of historic landscapes in Wales, Cadw, CCW and ICOMOS (UK)(International
Council on Monuments and Sites) published the two-volume Register of Landscapes
of Historic Interest in Wales. This advisory and non-statutory document
highlights what are considered to be the best examples of different types of
historic landscape in Wales. However, the selection of areas for this Register
does not reduce the importance of the rest of Wales’s rich historic landscape. A
good practice guide explains how the Register should be used in assessing the
effect of major developments on the historic landscape. This dataset comprises
GIS polygon areas, however, there are privisos and advice regarding the
appropriate use of this dataset (see USE CONSTRAINTS). All planning enquiries
that may effect a Historic Landscape Area should be directed to Cadw

Sunday, February 26, 2012

A unique runestone that is the first to mention Norway as a country and that
documents the establishment of Christianity there, has been placed on a list of
world heritage documents of international importance.

The Kuli Stone. Image: NTNU Museum of Natural History
of Archaeology

The “Kuli Stone” is the oldest object in the
newly launched register of Norway’s list of documents to be included in UNESCO’s
Memory of the World programme. The programme is
an international register of documents that are seen as important aspects of our
shared international heritage. The Norwegian version was launched on 8 February
2012 and lists documents that are especially important in Norway’s history and
to its cultural heritage.

The text on the Kuli Stone is the first known
occurrence and use of the term “Nóregi” – “Norway” – in the country it names.
The stone has additional importance as it also dates to the establishment of
Christianity in the country in a phrase that is often transcribed as:

limate scientists have been examining the past
environments and archaeological remains of Norse Greenland, Iceland and
North Atlantic Islands for several years. They have been particularly
interested in the end period of the settlements in the early part of the
Little Ice Age
(1300-1870 CE) and have been able to analyse how well the Norse
responded to changes in economy, trade, politics and technology,
against a backdrop of changing climate.

They found that Norse societies fared best by keeping their options
open when managing their long-term sustainability, adapting their trade
links, turning their backs on some economic options and acquiring food
from a variety of wild and farmed sources. Researchers say their
findings could help inform decisions on how modern society responds to
global challenges but also warns of inherent instabilities that do not
directly link to climate.

In the middle ages, people in Iceland embraced economic changes
sweeping Europe, developed trading in fish and wool and endured hard
times to build a flourishing sustainable society. In Greenland, however,
medieval communities maintained traditional Viking trade in prestige
goods such as walrus ivory.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

A recent article in the online publication io9, “The First Artificial Sweetener Poisoned Lots of Romans“ provided a (very) brief look at some of the uses of lead (Pb) in the Roman world, including the tired old hypothesis that it was rampant lead poisoning that led to the downfall of Rome - along with gonorrhoea, Christianity, slavery, and the kitchen sink.

The fact the Romans loved their lead is not in question, with plenty of textual and archaeological sources that inform us of the uses of lead – as cosmetics, ballistics, sarcophagi, pipes, jewellery, curse tablets, utensils and cooking pots, and, of course sapa and defrutum (wine boiled down in lead pots) – but what almost all news articles regarding the use of lead in ancient Rome seem to ignore is data from osteological evidence.

Contemporary medical knowledge allows us to understand that metabolic disorders can be caused by a lack of nutrients: a lack of vitamin C causes scurvy; and a lack of vitamin D can lead to rickets; but they can also be caused by an abundance of something, like too much fluoride, too much mercury, too much arsenic, or too much lead.

Ireland’s links with the Roman empire are being investigated in a new archaeological project in which science plays a large part writes ANTHONY KING

FIRST CENTURY AD. The Roman General Agricola reportedly says he can take and hold Ireland with a single legion. Some archaeologists have claimed the Romans did campaign in Ireland, but most see no evidence for an invasion. Imperial Rome and this island on its far western perimeter did share interesting links, however.

The Discovery Programme, a Dublin-based public institution for advanced research in archaeology, is to investigate Ireland’s interactions with the empire and with Roman Britain, aiming to fill gaps in the story of the Irish iron age, the first 500 years after the birth of Christ.

Friday, February 24, 2012

Ancient peoples around the world seem to have designed their sacred spaces not only for ceremonial sights, but for ceremonial sounds as well, archaeologists say.

In Peru, for example, a 3,000-year-old Andean ceremonial center's design was optimized for the blare of a priest's conch-shell trumpet. In Mexico, the Chichen Itza temple site features a staircase that can make hand claps sound like the chirp of a quetzal bird. And one of the best-known ancient monuments of all, England's Stonehenge, has a layout that's acoustically pleasing as well as astronomically significant.

The big question is, did ancient societies really have acoustics in mind when they built their monuments?

Saturday, February 18, 2012

The Neolithic period, around 10,000 BC in the Middle East, a time when the nomadic economy became permanent, founded on farming and breeding, could have arrived on the Iberian peninsula through a third route of expansion - North Africa. This is according to a study carried out by the Autonomous University of Madrid, the University of Seville and the Higher Council of Scientific Research (CSIC) and other Spanish, Portuguese and American universities. The study has been published in the journal "Quaternary Research".

Stone Circle in Cromeleque dos Almendres [Credit: ANSA]
Until now, two routes had been traditionally accepted: one identifying a first expansion of the northern margin of the Mediterranean sea, and the second, by sea, which reached the Balearic islands from Cyprus. The new research, though, highlights a third route from North Africa, which would identify the Neolithic characteristics that are found in the south of the Iberian peninsula.

Divers taking part in a routine survey spotted a lobster cleaning out its
burrow on the seabed and to their surprise the animal was throwing out dozens of
pieces of worked flint - which turned out to be the first sign of the
village.

A "unique" medieval coin from the reign of William the Conqueror has been discovered in a field near Gloucester.

The hammered silver coin was found by metal detectorist Maureen Jones just north of the city in November.

Experts from the Portable Antiquities Scheme said the find
"filled in the hole" in the dates the Gloucester mint was known to have
been operating.

The coin, which dates from 1077-1080, features the name of the moneyer Silacwine and where it was minted.
The Portable Antiquities Scheme said that until the coin was
discovered, there were no known examples of William I coins minted in
Gloucester between 1077-1080.

YORK’S annual Viking invasion has created a combination between Norse history and a traditional fairy story.

A key event in this year’s Jorvik Viking festival saw youth and experience come together when Phillip Sherman, of Booster Cushion Theatre, and several young helpers performed Eric the Red Riding Hood at the Early Music Centre, in Walmgate, York.

The play involves the heroine of the story encountering a myriad of characters in a humorous retelling of Little Red Riding Hood.

The Renaissance was just getting started, and the plague, too, was at the
beginning of its reign of terror. The Black Death was more than a medieval
explosion of horror: it kept coming back. For the next 300 years and longer,
plague became a regular part of life – and death – in Europe. Terrible outbreaks
periodically devastated cities. One of the very last, and most terrifying, of
these plagues hit London in 1665 and is described in chilling detail in one of
the first historical novels, Daniel Defoe's A
Journal of the Plague Year.

A new project from King’s College London and the University of Winchester
will allow researchers to explore the lands of medieval England as never before
has received over half a million pounds in funding.

The three-year project is led by medieval historian Professor Michael Hicks
at Winchester, and Paul Spence, Senior Lecturer at Kings’ College London’s
Department of Digital Humanities. It will digitise hundreds of years worth of
records showing the land held by tenants at the time of their death. The
‘Mapping the Medieval Countryside: The Fifteenth Century Inquisitions Post
Mortem’ project has been made possible by a £528,000 grant from the Arts and
Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Imagine half-naked men running through the streets, whipping young
women with bloodied thongs made from freshly cut goat skins. Although it
might sound like some sort of perverted sadomasochistic ritual, this is
what the Romans did until A.D. 496.

Mid-February was Lupercalia (Wolf Festival) time. Celebrated on
Feb. 15 at the foot of the Palatine Hill beside the cave where,
according to tradition, the she-wolf had suckled Romulus and Remus, the
festival was essentially a purification and fertility rite.

Rome - Heavy snow has caused extensive damage to the mediaeval walled town
of Urbino and further deteriorated the Colosseum in Rome, already badly in need
of repair, Italian newspapers reported on Tuesday.

Partial collapses have been reported at the convents of San Francesco and
San Bernardino in Urbino and the roof of the Church of the Capuchins outside
the town centre has completely caved in, La Repubblica reported.

There is also water damage in the town's 12th-century Duomo cathedral.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Gallagher Group have helped preserve some Roman walls
dug up by archaeologists – by burying them again.
After being recorded by Maidstone Archaeology Group, the walls of
the Roman building near East Farleigh were due to be back-filled
anyway, but fears they could be damaged by frost meant the job
needed to be done quickly.

The Maidstone-based building, civil engineering, quarrying and
property business provided a digger and staff for a day to get the
job done.

Linda Weeks, Honorary Secretary of the Maidstone Area
Archaeological Group, thanked everyone who helped out, adding: “We
were concerned that the ragstone walls of the Roman buildings would
have been damaged by the winter frosts, but Gallagher’s timely
intervention has meant these walls have now been preserved.”

Nabucco gas pipeline is one of the Southern Gas Corridor projects,
which is designed to transport gas from the Caspian region and Middle
East to the European countries.

According to the Bulgarian Institute's Director Lyudmil Vagalinski,
the surveying of the 420 km Bulgarian section of Nabucco has been
carried out under a special GIS (Geographical Information System)
technology.

He said that based on the data collected by the archaeologists, there
will be excavations along the route of the Nabucco pipeline.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Viking characters wearing battle attire took over Coppergate to help start the popular festival, which is expected to attract 40,000 people.

This year marks the 27th festival and will feature more than 80 events culminating in a ferocious battle before the Festival Of Fire climax featuring fire jugglers, a firework display and the burning of a 60ft-longship on Bustardthorpe Field at York Racecourse on Saturday.

We
have seen cave paintings where the splashy red pigment was used to
create images by ancient humans in present-day Europe tens of thousands
of years ago. Scientists have said that ancient humans used it generally
in Europe about 40,000 - 60,000 years ago, in West Asia as long ago as
100,000 years, and by the ancients in Africa as long ago as
200,000-250,000 years. Now, a new study suggests that Neanderthals were
also using it in the present-day Netherlands region of Europe as far
back as 200,000-250,000 years ago, if not earlier.

The study, conducted by a team of scientists led by W. Roebroeks of
Leiden University, examined and analyzed a sample of red material
retrieved from excavations originally conducted during the 1980's at the
Maastricht-Belvédère Neanderthal site in the Netherlands. The
excavations exposed scatterings of well-preserved flint and bone
artifacts that were produced in a river valley during the Middle
Pleistocene full interglacial period. During the coarse of the
excavation, soil samples were also collected, a typical procedure when
excavating a site. Within the soil samples were traces of a reddish
material. The samples were subjected to various forms of analyses and
experimentation to study their physical properties. They identified the
reddish material as hematite, a common mineral form of iron oxide that was used for pigmentation by prehistoric populations.

More details have emerged about the archaeological find of Roman ruins
at a spot near Bourgas on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast – including the
fact that they have been found before and funding already has been
allocated to investigate them.

The ruins emerged after huge seas
scoured the Black Sea coast earlier in February 2012, prompting
speculation whether this represented a hitherto unknown Roman settlement
or just a small sewerage or sanitation installation.

Bourgas
mayor Dimitar Nikolov went to see for himself and trumpeted the find,
which hit national headlines amid the bitter winter weather chaos.

But
it turned out that the existence of the ruins was well-known to
archaeologists and 120 000 leva (about 60 000 euro) already had
earmarked to investigate the site.

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have unearthed the remains of a medieval burial ground at St Giles’ Church in Pontefract.

Ten medieval graves were unexpectedly discovered during ongoing building works at the site.

Archaeologists
from West Yorkshire Archaeological Services (WYAS) also uncovered the
foundations of what is believed to have been the earliest church to
occupy the Market Place site.

Ian Roberts, archaeologist
overseeing the work for WYAS and the Wakefield Diocese, said: “Churches
invariably preserve some of the earliest medieval archaeology in our
historic towns and it is only occasionally that the opportunity arises
to investigate, evaluate and record the evidence that survives.

We are sorry to hear that you are unhappy with the new format of the show and that Prof. Mick Aston has decided to leave. We are saddened by Mick 's decision to leave, he has been a fantastic member of the Time Team team and we wish him well in the future.

Please be assured your complaint has been logged and noted for the information of those responsible for our programming.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us. We appreciate all feedback from our viewers; complimentary or otherwise.

Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Computer modeling shows interactions between Neanderthals and modern human ancestors

As an ice age crept upon them thousands of years ago, Neanderthals
and modern human ancestors expanded their territory ranges across Asia
and Europe to adapt to the changing environment.

In the process, they encountered each other.

Although many anthropologists believe that modern humans ancestors
"wiped out" Neanderthals, it's more likely that Neanderthals were
integrated into the human gene pool thousands of years ago during the
Upper Pleistocene era as cultural and climatic forces brought the two
groups together, said Arizona State University Professor C. Michael
Barton of the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity and School of
Human Evolution and Social Change.

"The traditional story in textbooks doesn't fit well with what we
know about hunter-gatherers. For the most part, they don't like to go
far from home. It's dangerous," Barton said.

The
Great Altar of Pergamon, a sculpted frieze dating from the 2nd century
BC and one of Berlin's top tourist attractions, will be closed for
repair work from 2014, the museum said Tuesday.

The
Pergamon Museum -- which opened to house the Ancient Greek masterpiece
in 1930 on Berlin's renowned Museum Island -- will undergo a complete
renovation in several phases, between October of this year and 2019.

"Preliminary
restoration work in the Pergamon Hall will likely begin in May 2014,"
the state cultural authority said in a statement.

Mick Aston, the archeologist, has quit Time Team after producers hired a
former model as the programme’s co-presenter.

The 65-year-old, who has been on the show for 19 years, said he had been left
“really angry” by changes which led to the introduction of co-presenter
Mary-Ann Ochota and some archaeologists being axed.

In an interview with the magazine British Archaeology, Prof Aston, the show’s
former site director, said: “The time had come to leave. I never made any
money out of it, but a lot of my soul went into it. I feel really, really
angry about it.”

He was responding to changes first proposed by producers at Channel 4 in late
2010, which included a new presenter to join Tony Robinson and decisions to
“cut down the informative stuff about the archaeology”.

Monday, February 06, 2012

We are pleased to announce that the post-excavation reports for Series 18 (first
broadcast in 2011) are now available to read online or download via our Time Team Reports page. This year, since Channel 4
have reorganised their Time Team website, we have also linked to the episode pages on
the Channel 4 website. There it is possible to view the episodes themselves.
Just click the "Watch now on 4oD" link underneath the site summary.

Wessex Archaeology are responsible for making sure that all Time Team’s
trenches are properly recorded, using standard techniques, and that a report is
compiled at the end of the dig, to present the results. We work closely with the
people carrying out the site survey, the geophysical survey and the landscape
survey, all of whose results are incorporated in our reports.

Archaeologists reveal a new way of viewing Stonehenge using Google Earth
software

Millions of people have used Google Earth's
geo-modelling software to take a tour of the moon, Mars, foreign countries, or –
let's be honest – to compare their homes with those of their neighbours. But now
a new project developed by Bournemouth
University academics is giving surfers access to a virtual prehistoric
landscape: Stonehenge.

The World Heritage site near Salisbury is now more accessible than ever,
archaeologists claim, thanks to Google's Under-the-Earth: Seeing Beneath
Stonehenge project. Their last few years of findings, combined with the search
giant's technology, allows surfers to visit the Neolithic village of Durrington
Walls, to scout around prehistoric houses, to see reconstructions of
Bluestonehenge at the end of the Stonehenge Avenue and to explore the great
timber monument called the Southern Circle. The sites look as they would have
appeared more than 4,000 years ago – and all from the comfort of your desk.

In 130 BC, a ship fashioned from the wood of walnut trees, bulging
with medicines and Syrian glassware, sank off the coast of Tuscany,
Italy. Archaeologists found its precious load 20 years ago and now, for
the first time, archaeobotanists have been able to examine and analyse
pills that were prepared by the physicians of ancient Greece.

DNA analyses show that each millennia-old tablet is a mixture of more than 10 different plant extracts, from hibiscus to celery.

“Medicinal plants have been identified before, but not a compound
medicine, so this is really something new,” says Alain Touwaide,
director of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions,
which has the world’s largest digital database of medical manuscripts.

The Vikings are both famous
and notorious for their liking of beer and mead and archaeologists
have discussed for years whether Eric the Red (ca 950-1010) and his
followers had to make do without the golden drink when they settled in
Greenland around the year 1,000: The climate was mild when they landed,
but was it warm enough for growing barley?

Researchers from the National Museum in Copenhagen say the answer to
the question is ‘yes’. In a unique find, they uncovered tiny fragments
of charred barley grains in a Viking midden on Greenland.

The find is final proof that the first Vikings to live in Greenland
did grow barley – the most important ingredient in making a form of
porridge, baking bread and of course in brewing beer, traditionally seen
as the staple foods in the Vikings’ diet.

Greek
Macedonians discovered a valuable treasure hidden in the bowels of the
earth, thanks to the methodical excavations undertaken in the
construction of the Thessaloniki metro.

Many
artifacts found in the excavation, from items such as gold hoops,
benches, and thousands of everyday objects, up to whole churches,
remnants of the glorious, long history of Thessaloniki, have come to
light. The excavations were completed by the end of the year, leaving
behind thousands of “mosaics” of cultures that flourished in the city.

Archaeologists
are revealing a palimpsest of the city, a city that has undergone
constant and continuous phases of occupation from the 4th century BC,
when it was founded in Thessaloniki, until now! “In Byzantium,
Thessalonica was described as the second city of Constantinople,
precisely because of its extremely important historical position in the
region.” Read the rest of this article...

NEW details about the rich history of Britain’s biggest county have been made available to for all to see.

The clues to the past have been unearthed by local archaeology groups
around North Yorkshire and have now been published on the internet.

More than 2,500 newly recorded archaeological sites - and new
information on many previously known sites - have been posted by the
county council in the online North Yorkshire Historic Environment
Record.

Sunday, February 05, 2012

Everybody is African in origin. Barring a smattering of genes from
Neanderthals and other archaic Asian forms, all our ancestors lived in
the continent of Africa until 150,000 years ago. Some time after that,
say the genes, one group of Africans somehow became so good at
exploiting their environment that they (we!) expanded across all of
Africa and began to spill out of the continent into Asia and Europe,
invading new ecological niches and driving their competitors extinct.

There is plenty of dispute about what gave these people such an
advantage—language, some other form of mental ingenuity, or the
collective knowledge that comes from exchange and specialization—but
there is also disagreement about when the exodus began. For a long time,
scientists had assumed a gradual expansion of African people through
Sinai into both Europe and Asia. Then, bizarrely, it became clear from
both genetics and archaeology that Europe was peopled later (after
40,000 years ago) than Australia (before 50,000 years ago).

Thursday, February 02, 2012

Archaeologists are notoriously nervous of attributing ritual
significance to anything (the old joke used to be that if you found an
artefact and couldn't identify it, it had to have ritual significance),
yet they still like to do so whenever possible. I used to work on a site
in the mid-1980s – a hill fort in Gloucestershire – where items of
potential religious note occasionally turned up (a horse skull buried at
the entrance, for example) and this was always cause for some
excitement, and also some gnashing of teeth at the prospect of other
people who weren't archaeologists getting excited about it ("And now I
suppose we'll have druids turning up").

The Brodgar complex
has, however, got everyone excited. It ticks all the boxes that make
archaeologists, other academics, lay historians and pagans jump up and
down. Its age is significant: it's around 800 years older than
Stonehenge (although lately, having had to do some research into ancient
Britain, I've been exercised by just how widely dates for sites vary,
so perhaps some caution is called for). Pottery found at Stonehenge
apparently originated in Orkney, or was modelled on pottery that did.

For
the first five years of life, human cognition slowly comes to fruition,
receiving and storing information and experience from the environment
and enabling humans to advance beyond the capabilities of their primate
cousins, according to a study published online in Genome Research. An
international team of researchers have identified extended synaptic
development in the prefrontal cortex of the human brain that sheds new
light on the evolution of human cognition and suggests another reason
why the human family diverged from other primates 4-6 million years ago.

"Why can we absorb environmental information during infancy and
childhood and develop intellectual skills that chimpanzees cannot?" asks
study author Dr. Philipp Khaitovich of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "What makes
the human brain so special?"

Treasure
hunters and looters have been plundering a Byzantine cemetery and the
İnceğiz caves in Istanbul’s Çatalca district for many years, despite the
area’s recognition as a protected archeological site of the first
degree.

“Grave
diggers have swarmed into the region when the excavation work in the
cemetery came to an end in 1995 upon the order of the Archeology Museum.
Unlicensed excavations take place inside the graves that were carved
into stone, after [the looters] break the stone lids. History is being
destroyed,” said Ahmet Rasim Yücel, the head of the Çatalca Culture and
Tourism Association.

Despite
constant patrols by gendarmerie forces, controls are still lax because
the area in question is too wide, according to Çatalca District Gov.
Nevzat Taşdan, who also complained about the lack of means available to
them in combating treasure hunters, the daily Akşam reported.

KEEN historians can learn more about the latest local archaeological
excavations in Wirral at a talk being held next week.

The Friends of Greasby Library will host a lecture by local historian Rob
Philpott who will describe how finds in a garden in Irby shed new light on
settlements in the area from the Bronze Age to the arrival of the Vikings.

Roman pottery was discovered by chance, providing new evidence to link the
earliest inhabitants of Wirral with later Scandinavian settlers.

And the beginnings of human settlement in Wirral have been dated to the
Mesolithic period, following finds in the early 1990’s at Greasby.

Archaeologists think the axe
head could be evidence of a battle in 894 AD

A Viking axe head found in a Gloucestershire village could
be evidence of a battle more than 1,100 years ago, according to
archaeologists.

The wrought iron object, found in Slimbridge in 2008, has now been identified
as being of Viking origin.
Historians say a band of Vikings sailed up the River Severn and fought
against the Anglo-Saxons in 894 AD.
Archaeologists say where the axe head was found is where they could have tied
up their ships.

Over the next few weeks, people walking across the Romerberg on their way to the
Emperor's Cathedral will automatically find themselves facing a gigantic
construction site. What's happening here in the heart of Frankfurt's old town,
passers-by may ask. It is, simply put, one of the most controversial and, at the
same time, one of the most spectacular reconstruction projects currently going
on in Germany. While other cities squabble over the reconstruction of individual
buildings, Frankfurt am Main has been discussing the reconstruction of an entire
quarter.

The chronology of
the steps it took to bring the project to fruition says much about the general
state of mind of Frankfurt's citizenry, for it was they that helped to bring
about what the casual observer might call the obvious solution. But the
influence exerted by Frankfurt's inhabitants is not surprising, really. After
all, the city has been referred to as the "cradle of German democracy" since the
landmark events of 1848.Read the rest of this article...

Five students in the small Baltic state of Estonia, who have abandoned modern
conveniences for a week in a replica wooden hut built on the site of an ancient
hill fort, have discovered that Iron Age accommodation was mainly cold, dark and
smoky.

"You can't heat and be in the building and after dark there is no light,"
said Kristiina Paavel, 24, one of the students.

AN archaeological survey carried out on a former grain silos site near Lynn’s
South Quay should help to fill gaps in knowledge of that part of the town’s
historic core, an expert says.

Dr Ken Hamilton, senior historic environment officer with Norfolk County
Council, said the recent dig at the former Sommerfeld and Thomas site, between
South Quay and Millfleet, had uncovered medieval deposits and what appeared to
be a series of 18th century surfaces, like cobbles.

He said: “It’s certainly of interest because that corner is represented on
historic maps but it has not been very clear what goes on at the junction of
Millfleet and the Ouse. It should lead to more statements about the town’s
history in that area.”

About Me

I am a freelance archaeologist and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland specializing in the medieval period. I have worked as a field archaeologist for the Department of Environment (Northern Ireland) and the Museum of London. I have been involved in continuing education for many years and have taught for the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education (OUDCE) and the Universities of London, Essex, Ulster, and the London College of the University of Notre Dame, and I was the Archaeological Consultant for Southwark Cathedral. I am the author of and tutor for an OUDCE online course on the Vikings, and the Programme Director and Academic Director for the Oxford Experience Summer School.